Short Report: Speeded Reasoning Moderates the Inverse Relationship Between Autistic-Like Traits and Emotion Recognition

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Bertrams ◽  
Katja Schlegel
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Inverse Relationship ◽  
Time Pressure ◽  
Recognition Performance ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Autism Spectrum Quotient ◽  
Short Report ◽  
Reasoning Ability ◽  
Reasoning Test ◽  
The Mind

People high in autistic-like traits have been found to have difficulties with recognizing emotions from nonverbal expressions. However, findings on the autism—emotion recognition relationship are inconsistent. In the present study, we investigated whether speeded reasoning ability (reasoning performance under time pressure) moderates the inverse relationship between autistic-like traits and emotion recognition performance. We expected the negative correlation between autistic-like traits and emotion recognition to be less strong when speeded reasoning ability was high. MTurkers (N = 217) completed the ten item version of the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ-10), two emotion recognition tests using videos with sound (Geneva Emotion Recognition Test, GERT-S) and pictures (Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test, RMET), and Baddeley's Grammatical Reasoning test to measure speeded reasoning. As expected, the higher the ability in speeded reasoning, the less were higher autistic-like traits related to lower emotion recognition performance. These results suggest that a high ability in making quick mental inferences may (partly) compensate for difficulties with intuitive emotion recognition related to autistic-like traits.

Speeded reasoning moderates the inverse relationship between autistic traits and emotion recognition

Autism ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (8) ◽  
pp. 2304-2309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Bertrams ◽  
Katja Schlegel
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Inverse Relationship ◽  
Recognition Performance ◽  
Autistic Traits ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Reasoning Ability ◽  
Underlying Assumption ◽  
Reasoning Test ◽  
Autistic People

People with diagnosed autism or being high in autistic traits have been found to have difficulties with recognizing emotions from nonverbal expressions. In this study, we investigated whether speeded reasoning (reasoning performance under time pressure) moderates the inverse relationship between autistic traits and emotion recognition performance. We expected the negative correlation between autistic traits and emotion recognition to be less strong when speeded reasoning was high. The underlying assumption is that people high in autistic traits can compensate for their low intuition in recognizing emotions through quick analytical information processing. A paid online sample ( N = 217) completed the 10-item version of the Autism Spectrum Quotient, two emotion recognition tests using videos with sound (Geneva Emotion Recognition Test) and pictures (Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test), and Baddeley’s Grammatical Reasoning Test to measure speeded reasoning. As expected, the inverse relationship between autistic traits and emotion recognition performance was less pronounced for individuals with high compared to low speeded reasoning ability. These results suggest that a high ability in making quick mental inferences may (partly) compensate for difficulties with intuitive emotion recognition related to autistic traits. Lay abstract Autistic people typically have difficulty recognizing other people’s emotions and to process nonverbal cues in an automatic, intuitive fashion. This usually also applies to people who—regardless of an official diagnosis of autism—achieve high values in autism questionnaires. However, some autistic people do not seem to have any problems with emotion recognition. One explanation may be that these individuals are able to compensate for their lack of intuitive or automatic processing through a quick conscious and deliberate analysis of the emotional cues in faces, voices, and body movements. On these grounds, we assumed that the higher autistic people’s ability to reason quickly (i.e. to make quick logical inferences), the fewer problems they should have with determining other people’s emotions. In our study, we asked workers on the crowdsourcing marketplace MTurk to complete a questionnaire about their autistic traits, to perform emotion recognition tests, and to complete a test of the ability to reason under time constraints. In our sample of 217 people, we found the expected pattern. Overall, those who had higher values in the autism questionnaire scored lower in the emotion recognition tests. However, when reasoning ability was taken into account, a more nuanced picture emerged: participants with high values both on the autism questionnaire and on the reasoning test recognized emotions as well as individuals with low autistic traits. Our results suggest that fast analytic information processing may help autistic people to compensate problems in recognizing others’ emotions.

The “Reading the Mind in Films” Task: Complex emotion recognition in adults with and without autism spectrum conditions

2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ofer Golan ◽  
Simon Baron-Cohen ◽  
Jacqueline J. Hill ◽  
Yael Golan
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Autism Spectrum Conditions ◽  
Complex Emotion ◽  
The Mind

scholarly journals Mentalising Moderates the Link between Autism Traits and Current Gender Dysphoric Features in Primarily Non-autistic, Cisgender Individuals

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (11) ◽  
pp. 4148-4157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aimilia Kallitsounaki ◽  
David Williams
Keyword(s):  
General Population ◽  
Gender Dysphoria ◽  
Objective Measure ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Autism Spectrum Quotient ◽  
Population Number ◽  
Autism Traits ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Mind

Abstract The co-occurrence between autism and gender dysphoria has received much attention recently. We found that, among 101 adults from the general population number of autism traits, as measured using the autism-spectrum quotient was associated significantly with recalled and current gender dysphoric traits. Furthermore, performance on an objective measure of mentalising, such as the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” test was associated with current gender dysphoric traits, but most importantly it moderated the relation between number of autism traits and number of current gender dysphoric traits, such that the association was significant only when mentalising ability was relatively low. Results suggest mentalising may represent a contributing factor to the relation between autism and gender dysphoric traits in the general population.

scholarly journals Emotion Recognition Abilities in Adults with Anorexia Nervosa are Associated with Autistic Traits

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 1057 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jess Kerr-Gaffney ◽  
Luke Mason ◽  
Emily Jones ◽  
Hannah Hayward ◽  
Jumana Ahmad ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Anorexia Nervosa ◽  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Recognition Performance ◽  
Treatment Strategies ◽  
Autistic Traits ◽  
Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Comorbid Psychopathology

Difficulties in socio-emotional functioning are proposed to contribute to the development and maintenance of anorexia nervosa (AN). This study aimed to examine emotion recognition abilities in individuals in the acute and recovered stages of AN compared to healthy controls (HCs). A second aim was to examine whether attention to faces and comorbid psychopathology predicted emotion recognition abilities. The films expressions task was administered to 148 participants (46 AN, 51 recovered AN, 51 HC) to assess emotion recognition, during which attention to faces was recorded using eye-tracking. Comorbid psychopathology was assessed using self-report questionnaires and the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule–2nd edition (ADOS-2). No significant differences in emotion recognition abilities or attention to faces were found between groups. However, individuals with a lifetime history of AN who scored above the clinical cut-off on the ADOS-2 displayed poorer emotion recognition performance than those scoring below cut-off and HCs. ADOS-2 scores significantly predicted emotion recognition abilities while controlling for group membership and intelligence. Difficulties in emotion recognition appear to be associated with high autism spectrum disorder (ASD) traits, rather than a feature of AN. Whether individuals with AN and high ASD traits may require different treatment strategies or adaptations is a question for future research.

Spanish validation of the “Reading the Mind in the Voice” task: A study of complex emotion recognition in adults with autism spectrum conditions

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 101421
Author(s):  
Sergio Sánchez-Reales ◽  
Carmen Caballero-Peláez ◽  
Javier Prado-Abril ◽  
Félix Inchausti ◽  
María Lado-Codesido ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Autism Spectrum Conditions ◽  
Adults With Autism ◽  
Spanish Validation ◽  
Complex Emotion ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Voice

scholarly journals Atypical Facial Emotion Recognition in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: Exploratory Analysis on the Role of Task Demands

Perception ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 030100662110381
Author(s):  
Emese Nagy ◽  
Louise Prentice ◽  
Tess Wakeling
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorders ◽  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Time Pressure ◽  
Emotional Functioning ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Task Demands ◽  
Facial Emotion Recognition ◽  
Facial Emotion ◽  
Compensatory Mechanisms ◽  
Spectrum Disorders

People with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) have difficulty with socio-emotional functioning; however, research on facial emotion recognition (FER) remains inconclusive. Individuals with ASD might be using atypical compensatory mechanisms that are exhausted in more complex tasks. This study compared response accuracy and speed on a forced-choice FER task using neutral, happy, sad, disgust, anger, fear and surprise expressions under both timed and non-timed conditions in children with and without ASD ( n = 18). The results showed that emotion recognition accuracy was comparable in the two groups in the non-timed condition. However, in the timed condition, children with ASD were less accurate in identifying anger and surprise compared to children without ASD. This suggests that people with ASD have atypical processing of anger and surprise that might become challenged under time pressure. Understanding these atypical processes, and the environmental factors that challenge them, could be beneficial in supporting socio-emotional functioning in people ASD.

scholarly journals Processing of expressions by individuals with autistic traits: Empathy deficit or sensory hyper-reactivity?

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (7) ◽  
pp. e0254207
Author(s):  
Chunyan Meng ◽  
Chao Huo ◽  
Hongxin Ge ◽  
Zuoshan Li ◽  
Yuanyan Hu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Autistic Traits ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Autism Spectrum Quotient ◽  
World Theory ◽  
The Face ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Social Difficulties ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Sensory Overload

Individuals with autistic traits display impaired social interaction and communication in everyday life, but the underlying cognitive neural mechanisms remain very unclear and still remain controversial. The mind-blindness hypothesis suggests that social difficulties in individuals with autistic traits are caused by empathy impairment in individuals; however, the intense world theory suggests that these social difficulties are caused by sensory hyper-reactivity and sensory overload, rather than empathy impairment. To further test these two theories, this study investigated event-related potentials (ERPs) to explore the cognitive neural processing of repetitive expressions in individuals with autistic traits. This study employed the Mandarin version of the autism-spectrum quotient (AQ) to assess autistic traits in 2,502 healthy adults. Two subset groups were used, e.g., the participants of a high-AQ group were randomly selected among the 10% of individuals with the highest AQ scores; similarly, the participants in the low-AQ group were randomly selected from the 10% of participants with the lowest AQ scores. In an experiment, three different facial expressions (positive, neutral, or negative) of the same person were presented successively and pseudo-randomly in each trial. Participants needed to define the expression of the face that was presented last. The results showed that compared with the low-AQ group, the high-AQ group exhibited higher P1 amplitudes induced by the second and third presented expressions, as well as higher P3 amplitudes induced by the third presented negative expressions. This indicates that individuals with autistic traits may experience overly strong perception, attention, and cognitive evaluation to repetitive expressions, particularly negative expressions. This result supports the intense world theory more strongly than the mind-blindness hypothesis.

scholarly journals Facial masks affect emotion recognition in the general population and individuals with autistic traits

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (9) ◽  
pp. e0257740
Author(s):  
Farid Pazhoohi ◽  
Leilani Forby ◽  
Alan Kingstone
Keyword(s):  
General Population ◽  
Facial Expression ◽  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Facial Expression Recognition ◽  
Autistic Traits ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Autism Spectrum Quotient ◽  
Mask Condition ◽  
Expression Recognition

Facial expressions, and the ability to recognize these expressions, have evolved in humans to communicate information to one another. Face masks are equipment used in healthcare by health professionals to prevent the transmission of airborne infections. As part of the social distancing efforts related to COVID-19, wearing facial masks has been practiced globally. Such practice might influence affective information communication among humans. Previous research suggests that masks disrupt expression recognition of some emotions (e.g., fear, sadness or neutrality) and lower the confidence in their identification. To extend the previous research, in the current study we tested a larger and more diverse sample of individuals and also investigated the effect of masks on perceived intensity of expressions. Moreover, for the first time in the literature we examined these questions using individuals with autistic traits. Specifically, across three experiments using different populations (college students and general population), and the 10-item Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ-10; lower and higher scorers), we tested the effect of facial masks on facial emotion recognition of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and neutrality. Results showed that the ability to identify all facial expressions decreased when faces were masked, a finding observed across all three studies, contradicting previous research on fear, sad, and neutral expressions. Participants were also less confident in their judgements for all emotions, supporting previous research; and participants perceived emotions as less expressive in the mask condition compared to the unmasked condition, a finding novel to the literature. An additional novel finding was that participants with higher scores on the AQ-10 were less accurate and less confident overall in facial expression recognition, as well as perceiving expressions as less intense. Our findings reveal that wearing face masks decreases facial expression recognition, confidence in expression identification, as well as the perception of intensity for all expressions, affecting high-scoring AQ-10 individuals more than low-scoring individuals.

scholarly journals Cognitive Empathy as Imagination: Evidence From Reading the Mind in the Eyes in Autism and Schizotypy

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Priya Nahal ◽  
Peter L. Hurd ◽  
Silven Read ◽  
Bernard Crespi
Keyword(s):  
Recognition Performance ◽  
Cognitive Empathy ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Medium Effect ◽  
Attention Switching ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Magical Ideation ◽  
Social Abilities ◽  
Female Bias ◽  
The Mind

How is cognitive empathy related to sociality, imagination, and other psychological constructs? How is it altered in disorders of human social cognition? We leveraged a large data set (1,168 students, 62% female) on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test (RMET), the Autism Quotient (AQ), and the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ-BR) to test the hypotheses that the RMET, as a metric of cognitive empathy, reflects mainly social abilities, imagination, or both. RMET showed the expected female bias in performance, though only for eyes that expressed emotions and not for neutral expressions. RMET performance was significantly, and more strongly, associated with the AQ and SPQ subscales that reflect aspects of imagination (AQ-Imagination and SPQ-Magical Ideation) than aspects of social abilities (AQ-Social, AQ-Communication, and SPQ-Interpersonal subscales). These results were confirmed with multiple regression analysis, which also implicated increased attention (AQ-Attention Switching and, marginally non-significantly, AQ-Attention to Detail) in RMET performance. The two imagination-related correlates of RMET performance also show the strongest sex biases for the AQ and SPQ: male biased in AQ-Imagination, and female biased in SPQ-Magical Ideation, with small to medium effect sizes. Taken together, these findings suggest that cognitive empathy, as quantified by the RMET, centrally involves imagination, which is underdeveloped (with a male bias) on the autism spectrum and overdeveloped (with a female bias) on the schizotypy spectrum, with optimal emotion-recognition performance intermediate between the two. The results, in conjunction with previous studies, implicate a combination of optimal imagination and focused attention in enhanced RMET performance.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document